


respite

by plsnskanks (orphan_account)



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Violence, people die in this... kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-07 13:18:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17366585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/plsnskanks
Summary: in which tom spends an indeterminate amount of time in a waffle house





	1. Chapter 1

An angel and a demon walk into a bar. Well. More so the angel staggered into the bar after getting kicked out of the last one and the devil knowing the angel’s familiar haunts saw him come in.

But that doesn’t sound as nice, does it?

Tom is tired. Not the regular tired. The long day at work tired. Bus was late tired. Groceries are heavy tired. Tom was an existential sort of tired. The kind that went deeper than muscles, bones, deeper than well, Tom himself.

Tord slides up onto the stool next to him. The rustle of his clothes sound like the hiss of a snake. Tom hates him. He does. His every movement is so sleazy and dishonest. Tord didn’t walk. He slithered. He didn’t speak. He purred. Tom didn’t get what he had ever seen in those empty promises, empty eyes. 

Stuck here. Not damned but may as well be. There was no heaven after death, the only solace he had was that there wasn’t a timer on it. On the time he had left.

He could languish in mediocrity as long as he liked.

Him and Tord.

Tord and him.

The bartender, against better judgment, gives him another drink. Puts it down on the dirty bar counter, littered with engravings of names and obscenities, sparing Tom only a passing glance, skimming Tord as well, before turning away.

“Been a while,” Tord says as the bartender retreats. His voice has this low rasp to it and it sends odd feelings licking down Tom’s spine.

Tom doesn’t respond. Tord hates that. The ignoring. The silence. Tom’s gall to act like his the bigger of them two in this situation just because he can’t be bothered to respond. As if his silence proves his virtue when in reality it proved his vice.

“Felt like it was that time again, time to come around and let you know you lied,” Tord said. And he drags a finger around the rim of Tom’s glass careful to snap it back when Tom goes to swat at it.

Because they can’t touch can they? Right. Well they can, theoretically, but the only result is the smell of burnt flesh and the only wound that takes more than a couple minutes to heal for Tord. He is not proud to admit in the past he goaded Tom into touching him on purpose. He liked to imagine he could feel the touch just a moment before his skin set on fire.

“Cool it there, angel,” Tord smiles but draws back a little further as he does.

“Leave me alone,” Tom says, and upends his glass. The bar swims around him, colors running together like an oil painting left out in the rain. The yellow lights bleed into the dim hazelnut browns of the floor and Tom tilts off his chair a bit. Tord goes to catch him and remembers himself as his hand is inches from Tom’s back.

Tom recovers himself, straightens up and glares at Tord. 

“I don’t need you looking after me,” he sneers. Tom was so ugly. He thinks that’s kind of what he liked about him. That something so pretty and pristine, could be so rotten. He’s always liked the contrast. The contradiction. Tom was what he needed to be when he needed to be. 

A little too hellish for heaven. A little too saintly to quite make it all the way down.

“Oh right, no I got it, because it’s Big Guy up there that is doing that,” Tord says, jamming a finger up at the ceiling. “That’s why he left your derelict ass here for century on century.”

“I don’t need this argument recapped,” Tom snarls and he is sliding off the stool to wobble dangerously on his own two feet. Again, Tord finds himself reaching out to steady him. Satan be praised. Why after all this time…?

Tom’s face was like had always been. Drawn, tight, crease lines between the brow from thinking in winding circles for far too long. It was pale, pale and almost luminescent against the dim background of the seedy bar.

“Look, don’t let me cheat you out of another drink,” Tord said rifling in his coat for something. He comes away with a flask in his hand. It winks seductively in the bar lighting. It catches Tom’s eye and he turns and looks at it a moment, contemplating it.

“Yeah right, like I’ll drink some devil’s piss straight from the source,” he starts turning away. Damn it, no. If there was one sight he hated more than anything it was Tom’s back sealing off the argument.

“It’s vodka,” Tord said, and he opens the flask to take a swig and does so, extending the flask out to Tom after he is done.

Tom eyes it before reaching out and taking it. His fingers just brush Tord’s and he pulls away as his skin singes.

“Fuck,” he hisses.

Tom looks at him with something approaching concern, and then drowns that emotion with vodka. The flask is clattering to the floor a moment later as he doubles over, foaming at the mouth just about, heavy wheezes coming from him as he finds himself kneeling on the ground.

Tord finds himself on the ground with him without a thought hand on his back, other hand on the floor next to him. He hears a wet splatter as Tom upheaves onto the floor and looks positively wretched.

“What… was… in… the… drink?” Tom grits out as his body heaves underneath him.

“Nothing,” Tord says, desolate as to an explanation. The alcohol had tasted fine to him. He looks down and notices his hand touching Tom’s. Instinctively he draws his hand back only to realize that it doesn’t hurt the way his finger on his other hand had. That one was still angry and blistered. 

Carefully, with a small tremor in his hand, Tord reached out and touched Tom’s cheek and it was Tom this time that leapt back in surprise.

“Don’t touch me. Wh-,” Tom stared at Tord’s unharmed hand in horror. “Why can you touch me?”  
Tom was on his feet and trying to stagger away from Tord in an instant. Tord got up to his feet and stalked after him. He wrapped his arm tightly under Tom’s waist and held him close, slinging his other arm around his shoulder.

“Get away from me,” Tom ground out.

“Shut up,” Tord snapped. Tom looked taken aback.

Tord bustles the two of them out of the bar. The patrons that had been looking over at the two of them while Tom was on the floor are now disinterested as Tord wills reality to shape closer to his desires. Perk of the job, one could say.

They walk out of the bar into a blue grey street, lit sparsely by contrasting yellow lamp posts whose light pools on the sidewalks and into the gutters. It’s misting lightly and the whole of the street has that slicked down reflective glow that the night rain tends to bring and it’s Tord’s favorite kind of evening, or would be usually, if he didn’t have an armful of panicking former angel.

“How did you do it?” Tom is pressing closer to him, and admittedly, after millenia of always dancing around Tom and never being able to touch him, it is a bit much to now be feeling his heat pressing up against his side. Tord’s head swims with foggy ideas of things he would like to do and say and touch and lick. And then he remembers promptly that Tom is a bag of meat with a mortal soul now.

“I didn’t do anything intentionally, I swear,” Tord says and innocence certainly doesn’t become him as Tom glares at him.

“You think I buy that?” Tom spits.

Tord lets go of Tom and pushes him back. They stand the two of them, apart in the fine mist. 

“You know what? Go ahead, go do whatever you think is going to fix this,” Tord says. He says the words but he sure as hell doesn’t mean them. Tom. Alone. With his newly minted mortality and absolutely no idea how to handle it. Did he know that cleaning solution wasn’t drinkable? Even if it tasted sweet? To look both ways before crossing the street? Not to go into dark alleys….

After all this time spent alone and miserable he didn’t have it in him to leave Tom in the gutter to rot. What kind of half-assed devil was he?

Tom looked at him and there it was. An odd fog of nostalgia came over Tord as he recognized the expression as fear. Something he hadn’t seen on Tom’s face in a while. A shiver wracked through Tom’s body as his hair seemed to wilt under the downpour of what was now rain.

Tord rubbed a hand over his face.

“I’m not going to force you to do anything, if you want to go jump into a river and see how the Big Guy feels about your mortal soul then, be my guest,” Tord said. “But if you want help, I can help.”

Tom looked at him, distrust plain on his features. “What do you have in mind?”

“My friend, he lives in clergy housing near the church and he might know what to do,” Tord says in a rush.

“You are friends with a priest?” Tom said in disbelief.

Tord shifts uneasily on his feet, “Edd is a nice guy.” Tom did not need to know how often he had come to Edd to ask stupid questions about whether he… whether he could….

“Tord why in the,” Tom sighs. “Never mind. Alright. Fine. How do I know this isn’t a bad deal again.”

“Tom the church is literally right there, I am not bringing you next to hallowed ground for my own benefit,” Tord says in exasperation.

“Alright,” Tom says after a long moment. “I am putting my faith in you.”

Tord snorts, “It isn’t misplaced, though I can’t say the same for you.”

“Every time I end up close to you I end up farther from where I want to be,” Tom said in irritation. The rain was soaking him now and as he shivered again against the onslaught of wind and rain he looked so fragile to Tord. Like glass. Something small and frail he could hold in his hand and shield against the elements of an apathetic outside world.

Tord squints at him. “You end up where you are alone, don’t fault me for your temptations, angel.”

“If there was no snake,” Tom began the age old argument.

“You would have found the fruit all on your own,” Tord finished for him. “Your curiosity is not nearly as naïve as you make it out to be. Your fall was expedited, but inevitable.”

Tom looks at him a long moment in the dark of the street and it occurs to the both of them that at this point words have lived past their meaning and the only way for them to progress in this game is through action.

When they arrive at the clergy house, it is dark and empty and Tom looks at Tord in suspicion. 

“The church,” Tord says in response to his look, “Is right over there if you don’t trust my intentions. Must’ve forgot Edd was going on retreat or something this week.”

Tom opens his mouth to speak when the both of them stiffen at a movement behind them.

“Ah look if it isn’t our fallen friend,” purrs a voice behind the two of them.

“Hello Matt, been a while,” Tord says. Matt barely spares him a glance. Figures. They had… a thing. Maybe? Tord wasn’t sure if incubi ever really got serious, but from what he knew, they certainly felt envy. 

“Matt?” Tom said, looking at the incubi in curious trepidation.

Matt turns to Tord. Tord doesn’t like the look on Matt’s face. Jealously is a universally ugly emotion and it mars Matt’s otherwise flawless plaster complexion.

“Ah so this is the one, is it? That gave you so much heartache.”

“Something like that,” Tord said warily.

“Hell’s been missing you,” Matt said airily. He walks over towards Tord, brushes a hand over his chest. Turns to look at Tom, “Something about dereliction of duty. Higher ups are not pleased,” He whispers the words into Tord’s ear and then seemingly teleports away before Tord can swat at him. He never liked that about Matt. The fact he was always too slippery to grasp, as if he was made entirely of smoke and pent up sexual energy.

Matt approached Tom and when he walked it gave the effect of something feline stalking it’s prey. Tord knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Matt needed to stay away from Tom.

Matt extends a hand out to Tom and for a moment it looks as if he is offering his hand to Tom. Then a jagged knife appears and Tom barely has time to throw his hands up in self-defense.

The knife sinks in. Matt throws a cool look over his shoulder at Tord who is gawping open mouthed at the spreading stain on Tom’s shirt.

“I’ll kill you,” The words come out flat and emotionless as Tord stares deadpan at Matt. It’s a not a threat or a promise. The way Tord says it, it’s a fact.

“You’ll be over it in a century,” Matt says blithely and with that he evaporates into wisps of smoke that curl and spiral in wake.

Tord rushes over to Tom to find him out of reach. He is staggering up the stairs of a cathedral and Tord finds himself draining of his remaining hope for the situation.

“Tom, come back,” he shouts after the back of the man who is nearly bent double. He can hear Tom’s wheezy rasping breaths as he makes his way up the steps. At the last few he crawls.

“Tom!” Tord shouts, putting every strain of emotion he can into the outburst. Tom makes his way to his feet. Opens the door of the cathedral, and disappears inside. Out of Tord’s reach. Out of Tord’s view.

Tom is not feeling great. Hasn’t been feeling this not great since he got exiled from heaven.

But here he is now, at the foot of some great unknown, and he stands there on his own two feet. And he steps, one in front of the other.

He walks among row after row of empty pews as black spots dance before his eyes and the world starts to tinge grey at the edges. He approaches the snow-white altar. The only light in the church comes from the dim multicolored shades streaming through the stained glass and the minute flickering light from the tabernacle. 

The rest of the church stands stout, reverent and silent as Tom reaches the alter and leans on it heavily, taking the covering off with him as he slowly slides down onto the floor and the grey filter on his world turns darker and darker as the blood from his side seeps into the covering.

In the dim dying light, Tom lays and for once lets the exhaustion and isolation that has dogged him, century after century, consume him.

\---

It’s a hazy afternoon when Edd opens the door to let Tord in. They sit and chat for hours and as the light dims Tord flicks a hand at the candles in the room and they sputter to life. 

“Do you think there is a way back for everyone?” Tord asked as his features are thrown in stark contrast by the dancing light of the room.

Edd smiled, “I mean it says so doesn’t it?” He holds the bible up tauntingly.

“Even…?” Tord points to himself.

“It’s hard to think he would make exceptions now, don’t you think?” Edd said, and he was still smiling gently.

“I think some people would disagree.”

“Some people should read the bible a few more times. Pay more attention to the New than the Old,” Edd snorted. He rested a hand on Tord’s shoulder. 

“Rest easy in that the best you can do is all you can do.”

Tord looks at him sourly, “Thanks.”

Edd smiles benignly. “Not a problem.”

\---

Outside Tord hovers just before the steps.

“You stupid asshole,” Tord screamed from his place at the foot of the church steps. “Die in the one place I can’t possibly help you, yeah that’s fine.” Tord glared at the stone steps. He glared up at the church. He caught the eye of Jesus in particular, where he looked down benignly from his perch near the top, placid stone face unreadable,

“Yeah, yeah alright, that’s fine,” Tord ground out. He clenches his fists at his side and tries to calm his body from trembling at the thought of what he is about to do.

He took a step up on the church step and glared at the stone face as a wave of coursing agony lit up his entire extremity. He took another step and bit his lip. His teeth drew blood as he took another step. Then another. Another. Another. His seventh step was prevented by the fact his foot, when he had tried to lift it, had turned to ash. Tord fell over onto the steps, agony consuming every fiber of his being as a moment later, the rest of him disintegrated to ash.

Tord woke up in hell.

He wishes that was a figure of speech.

“Nice to see you again Tord,” Bing said appraisingly behind the massive oaken desk. Larry was next to him, scribbling hastily onto the notepad.

“Quite the theatrics you pulled up there, very moving,” Bing said. Larry nodded minutely in agreement.

“Now should we send you up again, or would you like to spend a bit of time cooling off in the flames of Hades?” Bing said, nodding to a rather fiery looking pit roaring just outside their window.

“I am here for something that doesn’t belong to you. I lost by mistake, clumsy me,” Tord said, giving Bing a fanged smile.

Bing looks at him appraisingly.

“I assume you want lost soul number, what is he again Larry?”

“23894375293,” Larry quipped.

“Ah yes him, a long time coming, you’re the one that turned him human aren’t you? What’s the matter, didn’t get enough time to torment him? You have plenty now,” Larry leers.

“I’ll give you anything,” Tord said, “Anything to get him out.”

“Take his place.”

“Done,” comes the answer, without a moment of hesitation.

Bing smiled catlike. “I knew you’d say that. What is the obsession with dragging him from the one place he so clearly belongs? Admit it. He fell just as much as the rest of us did, he just lacked the courage to follow though.”

“Courage,” Tord tasted the word on his tongue. “Yeah that’s it. That’s what we all had that he didn’t. Not humanity.”

“We both know he was all too human and that is why he is here.”

“So tell me Bing, are you going to do a longtime friend a favor?”

“Why bail him out, favor for a favor, explain me that?” Bing said, leaning back in his chair to give Tord a long look.

“He bailed out on me and I am not him.”

“Ah so this is how you live with yourself isn’t it. Getting by, by being everything except the thing that betrayed you. You poor lost soul.” Pity isn’t really the word for the expression on Bing’s face, but its about as close as any definable emotion can get.

“Why not? I can afford to let this gambit run a bit longer. You’re both due back here regardless of the choices you make,” Bing snapped his fingers and Tom materializes in a blaze of flames, unharmed and coughing.

He looks at Tord and then looks at the pit of raging flames beneath them and Tord swears he could strangle him for looking borderline wistful.

“Alright, thank you for your stay, if you two will proceed to the white gate on your left,” Larry gestures to one side of his office that promptly bursts into embers and crumbles down to reveal a white gate with a winding path beyond it. “Have a nice trip and see you again soon.”

\---

“We have to walk out of hell. Are you kidding me?” Tom said. “You can’t just materialize us out?”

“I can take myself out via teleportation, you are however, now considered alive and thus must pass through the gates of hell to leave. Technicality. And considering I literally just went to hell and back for you, you could stand to be a bit more grateful.”

“I wouldn’t be here, at all, if it wasn’t for you,” Tom snarled. Tord rounded on him, matching ferocity with ferocity.

“I didn’t make your decisions for you,” roared Tord. “Everything that you have now you have no one to hold to account but yourself. And yet here I am time after time trying to help enable you to deny that reality.”

Tom is, mercifully, silent. 

Tord isn’t really sure what within him has him hoping blindly, desperately, that something will reset. That somewhere in the reality he lives through on repeat if he just finds the right words, does the right thing, feels the right way, things will finally snap into place and he will be left with a stream of existence he can bear to live in.

They walk for what feels like an eternity, without much sense of direction. All they have is the general sense of ascent by the gentle slope of the path, but beyond that, it twists and turns and there is no light besides the dim glow from where they came, but eventually, that too dies. As they continue, a soft flutter of snow comes down, gentle, silent, and cold.

Tord touches a flake and smiles at it softly as it doesn’t melt or float of and away for a long moment.

Tord registers the cold, but it doesn’t really affect him until he looks over to see Tom blue lipped and miserable. Tord looks at him a long moment. He wants to snap at Tom for being so deathly stubborn, but he can see him, miserable, tired, looking wedged halfway between life and death.

God what is this part of him that keeps crumbling time after time. Breaking again and again. He wishes he could kill it. Eviscerate it and leave it dying on the floor apart from him. But he can’t. With every aching fiber of himself, he can’t.

He snaps his fingers and in his hands erupts a massive bloom of light and fire. He pools it in one hand and with his other he motions to Tom to upturn his palm. Tom looks weakly annoyed, but obeys. Tord upends the fire into his hand and there it stays, hovering far enough that Tom does not burn himself, but warm enough that the blueness of Tom’s features retreats and the path in front of them is better lighted.

“Thank you,” the angelic words break the long silence.

“Excuse me?” Tord said, staring at Tom as if he were the second coming.

“Thank you, you asshole, for bringing me back from hell,” Tom said, smiling at Tord with entirely too many teeth and a jaw that looked like it was wired shut.

“It was never even a question of going to get you, I hope you know that.”

“If this is part of some pious guilt game-.”

“It’s not. I just wanted you to know,” Tord said. Tom sees him then, by the light of the fire in his hands. Demons do not age. But Tord’s eyes are old, ancient, and soft.

“Thank you,” Tom says. And that is all he says. Because that is all there is to say.

Eventually they do make it out, Tom and Tord together are standing in some icy field of white.

“Where are we?” Tom says, in a mix of wonder and horror as he stares at the roving waves of icy hills that stretch on and on in every direction. He thinks, maybe, on the horizon there is a tree line.

“Iceland or Finland, I always forget which the gate is anchored in,” Tord says contemplatively.

“The gate?” Tom says and then turns to see a sizable white square, ornately engraved. And on top of it sat a white robed figure.

“Been waiting for you two a while,” she says, wings fluttering alongside her as if to illustrate her irritation. “Slow walkers.”

“Hello, Kim,” Tord said tiredly. Tom looks between the two of them alarmed.

“Did you know she was going to be here?”

“I didn’t. But I had a hunch that He was only going to stand for so much disruption.”

“Right you are,” said Kim a bit too animatedly for Tom’s taste. Angels. Can’t believe he was one of them once. High and mighty bureaucrats the lot of them.

“You two have overextended your welcome in the mortal realms,” Kim said and added a small patronizing smile to punctuate the statement.

With that she snapped her fingers and the snow around them seemed to lift up off the ground and consume their entire field of view.

When it fades the gate is gone, the snow is gone, Tom’s fire has been extinguished and the two of them are seated in a booth next to the window. There is a little ceramic vase on their table along with a salt and pepper shaker and some sugar packets. Outside there is a bottomless chasm of swirling grey clouds and mists that weave in and out of each other and give the two of them a lovely feeling of vertigo.

“Oh no. No, no, no,” Tom groaned. Tord looked over at him. To the side came the sound of someone clearing their throat politely. The two of them stiffened and turned.

“Can I take your order sweetie?” Katya said, pigtail bobbing as she tilted her head and snapped a piece of gum, notepad at the ready.

“He’ll have a coffee and I’ll take one too.”

Katya scrawled something down and then turned away.

“Who’s paying?” Tord asked. “And why are we in a coffee shop.”

“Waffle House,” Tom corrected. “And it’s on the Big Guy’s dime.”

“Okay,” Tord said, “So that leaves the question, why are we here?”

Tom shrugged.

“You know what this is? Because this one’s beyond me,” Tord said. His eyes catch on an embroidered version of John 3:16. 

“They built Limbo after the fall,” Tom sighed. “Of course you wouldn’t know about it.”

“You fell the same time as me, asshole,” Tord said.

“I did not fall, I was exiled. And the angels still talked to me,” Tom snipped.

“Alright, so what does that mean? What does all of this?” Tord gestures broadly to the shop around them. “Mean for you and me?”

“It means the Big Guy is deciding what happens next, is what it means,” Tom says, heat fading out of him as he leans glumly on his hand.

“Kay, here’s your coffee and also here is the deal,” Katya says, setting down Tom and Tord’s coffee in front of them. “Big Guy has been wiping the slate for a bunch of you defectors of late. Call it a bit of New Testament sugar. You get a new life. As human and for about eighty year or less we’ll be watching you more than just a regular guardian angel would. And when that time is up,” Katya snapped her fingers. “We’ll be back here, another round of coffees, another round of decisions.”

Tom and Tord sat in stunned silence.

“We don’t exactly exist on the plane of space and time anymore, but for the sake of terms you two can conceptually grasp…. Time? You got loads of it.” She puts down a little plastic tray, the kind that usually held receipts. With that Katya was gone and Tom and Tord were left with two steaming mugs, looking out at the opaque swirling masses beyond the coffee house windows.

“You want to read it?” Tord said.

“I have a good idea of what the fine details are going to be,” Tom said. He picks up the tray. Sure enough, on receipt paper is a reprint of everything Katya just said. At the bottom are two names and two cities with time stamps next to them.

Not even the same century. Damn.

They drink their coffee. It’s shit, because it is a waffle house after all and while space and time may not stay consistent, that at least does. Tord steps out the door. There’s a narrow bit of patio that drops off into the grey abyss.

Tord looks at Tom who is looking down at the pit. Wordlessly, Tom turns his hand palm up and offers it out to Tord. Tord takes it. He looks at Tom for a moment, eyes wet. Tom smiles back at him, softly.

“Stay out of hell this time,” Tom says, looking out into the grey.

“Same to you.”

Tord looks ready to step off when Tom jerks him back by his hand.

“Hey.”

Tord looks at him in surprise and curiosity that exist in themselves, free and unweighted.

“I will wait for you.”

Tord smiles, nods. A tear comes out the corner of his eye and rolls along the side of his nose, finally catching in the crease of his lip.

Together they step off.

There’s a rush of exhilaration that comes from the feeling of falling until terminal velocity is hit. They shoot like a bullet into the Grand Divide. 

It’s white.

And pure.

And free.

And when they come through neither is awake and they’ve drifted apart, and the past was left an eternity behind, burned away in the atmosphere of the Grand Divide.


	2. I THOUGHT I HAD IT ALL TOGETHER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BUT I WAS LEAD ASTRAY  
> THE DAY YOU WALKED AWAY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU WERE THE CLOCK  
> THAT WAS TICKING IN MY HEART

“I’ll wait for you,” Tom had said.

Tom had said a lot of things he regretted in his long lives. He should stop saying so many things. His mouth was racking up too many debts, boy were they a sight. His promise to Tord was unexpectedly harder to keep than he had thought.

“You… remedial idiot,” Tom says as he glowers into his coffee. It was not his first coffee. The table was littered with empty mugs, some forming piles and stacks, ripped sugar packets and specks of spilled coffee from when Tom had snorted in disbelief at the news.

Tord. 

On his third life now.

Apparently, something about Tom just made it easy for him to live his life easily, placidly, on his own. He remembered his first and last human life fondly. He grew up in a small house in the suburbs, made it out to university, worked a nice quite job, lived a nice fulfilling life with plenty of nice fulfilling relationships and people.

He never married. 

Something in him just never clicked with everyone else. He could never describe it, and as much as he loved other people and loved to be around them, it never manifested.

Weirdly enough he had this passing feeling once. He had stopped by in a book store on the edge of town he had visited on a whim. He had done that often. Drifted place to place as if he was looking for something, but he was never sure what. While looking through books he felt an old man staring at him and he looked up and their eyes met. His face was lined and his hand looked gnarled and arthritic as he rested it on a book he had been looking at. 

“Can I help you?” Tom asked in response to the gaze. 

Tom usually might have been unnerved or at least felt ill at ease by the attention but something about the man made him feel like they knew each other.

Like they had met somewhere but Tom couldn’t even put a finger as to when that would have been.

“No. No, thank you though,” The man said and then he had smiled and Tom’s chest had hurt and he was overwhelmed once more with the taste of nostalgia. It tasted a lot like chlorine.

The man never found what he was looking for and he left empty handed and Tom never saw him again. But he had thought about him off and on through out his life. He was one of those before bed last minute thoughts. Then Tom died. Cleared Heaven’s evaluations with his mortal soul being deemed to have a clean bill of health.

Tord however, was not having an easy time. Life one, Tord is born in the eighteen-hundreds. Tord decides to seek a better life with the rest. Tord on a dare eats something weird that died on the trail a couple days ago.

Tord dies of dysentery barely clearing age nineteen. Afterlife status: indeterminate. Katya serves the memo to him along with a fresh cup of hot coffee which Tom promptly chokes on a moment later upon reading.

Life two. Tord is born in the far future and into a body with spectacular mental capabilities. At age fifteen Tord is smart enough to figure out how to hack open the airlock, but not smart enough to realize that it is a bad idea. Another memo, this time served with cooler coffee and a fair warning from Katya.

Tom rubs his face, seriously, how many times can the guy botch these things up? He knew Tord was, well, Tord. But at this rate, it is getting impressive.

“Where is he scheduled to go next?” Tom asks in irritation.

“Uhhh,” Katya taps the question into her calculator with the eraser of her pencil and it prints out a neat little response in reply. “Heaven says it is confidential unless you have special interest in the case.”

“I am sitting in Limbo waiting for him, I certainly have an interest in the outcome of this case.”

Katya chews on her pencil tip for a moment.

“Hold up a sec, you’re cleared to be in heaven again?” Katya says pulling the tip out of her mouth and looking at Tom eagerly. 

“Yes…?” Tom says slowly. He didn’t know if he was going to like the direction this was going. 

“Which means you could apply to be Tord’s guardian angel! If you have a special interest in a lost or troubled soul, or you are on probation for ungodly duties, that’s what the whole program was for in the first place.”

Katya reaches into her apron and pulls out a slip of paper and sets it down on the table for Tom, setting her gnawed on pencil down next to him. With that she picks up a few of his mugs at bustles off looking pleased with herself.

Tom looks down at the paper and reads it:

“For any angel so generous as to dedicate their energy to a mortal soul… blah, blah,blah,” Tom was never one for Heaven’s theatrics and his eyes glaze over even trying to read the mess of moral grandstanding. 

Go to earth. To drag Tord out of peril long enough to get his wings. Sure. Why not?

He writes his name on the line labeled “applicant”.

He writes Tord’s on the line labeled “human soul in grave peril”.

There is a box at the end of the application, it reads “Special considerations.”

Tom eyes it for a while. Would telling the guys upstairs his particular situation hurt? Could it help? Tom thinks on the plain white square for a long time. So long that he still hasn’t decided what to do by the time Katya comes around again.

She peers over the table at his form, spots his hand hovering over the box and sets his coffee down and smiles at him as he looks up at her.

“There’s only one person who reads and approves those, y’know, so I can tell you right now, it won’t hurt to be honest.”

Tom smiles and nods. 

“And hey, if you do get it, and you happen to see Kim down there again, tell her I say hi!” Katya says and when she smiles this time her smile is a bit more bashful and there is a hint of pink to her cheeks.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pass on the message if I get the chance,” Tom said. Hell, he would go out of his way to do it at the rate Katya had been helping him out.

Tom scrawls his honest thoughts in the box. He folds the little paper in two and hands it to Katya when she comes by. 

“Good luck,” She says with a wink and then takes the paper and shoves it into her apron before turning away again. Tom isn’t really sure how long he waits, the waffle house is kind of like that. There was no use dabbling in terms of reality that weren’t in use.

“Another life went by for him,” Katya says the next time she comes around. “Rome, nasty accident with a catapult, didn’t even make it to his twenties.”

Tom sighed, “Why can’t they just piece together his standing by all these fractions of lives he is getting?”

Katya tapped her pencil on her cheek thoughtfully, “Well it’s like this, a life is like a big beautifully painted picture, y’know?” Katya says looking at Tom expectantly, blue eyes sparkling.

“But with Tord, all he is getting is some rough lines and maybe a corner of his painting finished before he bites it. And the big guy or his council or whoever is making the decisions think they need a little more of the picture finished than trying to collage Tord’s mortal soul together through all his mishaps.”

“Huh, alright,” Tom murmured as he pondered the imagery.

“Take it as a good thing,” Katya says. “At least he isn’t- oh!”

Katya’s little receipt machine started printing off automatically as she started in surprise. Her eyes skimmed the message as it printed and without a word she tore it off and set it to the table in front of Tom.

The receipt simply read this:

****************************************  
Applicant Angel Thomas Applying to the Position  
of Guardian Angel For Lost Soul 87432789523  
****************************************  
Application Status: ACCEPTED  
Assignment Location: New York, 1905  
Advisor Signoff: Ringo  
****************************************

Tom looks up from the paper, hands white and shaking.

“So this is it?” He says looking at Katya who is grinning at him broadly. She tucks her pencil behind her ear and thumps him on the back heartily.

“Go get him and keep him alive till his forties or something.”

Tom stood, looking at the paper again before folding it up into a tiny little packet. Katya rifled through her apron and pulled out a tiny little brown bag on a silver string.

“Here, keep it safe in there,” She said as she passed the necklace over to Tom. Tom took it and tucked the little lip of paper snugly in.

“Got anything else in there I’ll need?” He asked, cocking an eyebrow at Katya’s ever bountiful apron.

Katya grinned at him mischievously and reached in one last time, pulling out something paper thin, small and green.

A four-leaf clover.

“For luck,” She said and tucked it into Tom’s little pouch. “Heaven knows you’ll need it, four lives, that must be a record at this point. Go get ‘em.”

“Err, one last question,” Tom said, turning back and looking sheepish. “How do I get there?”

“Elevator’s right outside, only got one stop, no breaks needed,” Katya said, looking like she had told this joke at least a thousand times and still enjoyed herself immensely with each retelling.

“Well then,” Tom said rising to his feet and extending a hand to Katya who grasped it with a surprisingly firm grip. “It’s been a pleasure and thanks for all the coffee.”

“If you ever find yourself missing our slightly burnt inhouse brew, don’t be afraid to stop on by,” Katya smiled.

Tom smiled back and they parted. He was, once again, on the patio where he had last seen Tord. Something in him hurts. Tom looks down at the weaving grey mists and realizes that he misses Tord. Which is an odd thought because for centuries he couldn’t get far enough away from Tord. He hated him. That guy? Sucks. But here he was on the edge of something inevitable and the thought of the drop bringing him nearer to Tord made him feel almost alright. The most almost alright he had been in a while.

So Tom steps off and with a “whoosh” he is plummeting down through the grey mists and howling winds and then after all that into the empty nothing that was the Grand Divide. He wonders if this all ever gets blasé for the archangels.

Tom is wondering when about he is going to pass through the Grand Divide when he sees someone coming toward him from above? Below? East? Shit he lost track and there was no noticeable way to tell.

“Name’s Yuu, proprietor of the Grand Divide, heaven tells me you are scheduled in New York?” The angel says as he draws near, seeming unperturbed to be falling through the vast white void with Tom. “Sorry about all this, no one gets in or out of the divide without clearance. His orders and all that, y’see?”

Tom opened his packet and took out the small folded slip of paper, “Does this help?” 

Yuu takes it and examines it. “Ahh alright, I got your number now, no problem.” He returns the sheet to Tom who folds it and tucks it back away.

“Best of luck pal, you’re up.” With that Yuu spreads his wings and flaps away. Tom loses track of him as he disappears into a speck and then he notices the void is distinctly less void like, or part of him is distinctly more void like, he really isn’t sure, but reality does a sort of awkward shuffle like a pancake being flipped over into a skillet and Tom is slammed into, across, or under the divide. Something like that.

And there he is, in New York City in the early boom of the nineteen-hundreds in a small room where a squalling kid has just come out and the rest of this is a little uncomfortable so let’s just skip ahead a bit.

Tord, or as he is known by his family, Todd, is seven with a propensity for trouble and an insatiable curiosity for anything and everything around him.

Tom as a guardian angel is permitted to appear to Todd in dreams that he had no clue if Todd would or would not remember, and in extreme situations do what it takes to help keep Todd out of physical harm. He is no miracle worker, well, actually he is, but there were limits.

He couldn’t say, stop the train coming along the train tracks that Todd liked to play on as a young child, but he could move Todd out of the way just in the nick of time. 

Tom sat in the dirt road squinting at Todd as he breathed heavily and tried to calm his nerves. Todd was all of seven and already they had had numerous scares. Todd trying to pull down a pot of boiling water, Todd trying to lick a mousetrap, Todd attempting to pet almost anything that looked friendly, most of which were not.

Tom was starting to think him getting this job was less of an act of generosity with each day he held it.

But he did keep the job and do it dutifully and for the first time since his own human life Tom was allowed to sit back and enjoy Todd’s life from his perspective and the unique spectacle that was humanity.

Tom wasn't sure that angels could love in quite the same feverishly endearing way that humans could. You see, the one thing humans have is time. That is all they have, despite what they themselves will tell you. Not their riches, or their lovers, or their beauty. Time. And their one hallmark of love is the time they give to others, freely and of their own accord.

Angels had endless amounts of time and reality at their fingertips. So much so that he couldn't help but wonder if immortality made them lose something core and vital somewhere along the way.

Tom could not help but love humans for the way they loved each other, by giving up small fractions of themselves that they would never get back on the finite string that was their lifespan.

He watches Todd fall in love countless times. He falls in love with the small neighbor girl across the way who he chases after through the fields with her big bounding dog lolloping after the two of them emitting hearty barks and yips as the two of them screech and giggle in response.

He watches Todd meet his best friend and follow him down an unsavory path to being on the low rung in the mafia, the two of them being pawns in a much larger, bloodier power struggle. Tom deflects a few bullets, makes Todd’s weak cover absorb more damage than it should. He makes sure Todd’s gun jams so Todd cannot relieve anyone else of life either.

He cannot, however, save Todd from losing his best friend.

Todd leaves New York after that, now older than he was any of his previous lives, and considerably more weathered. He leaves something back there too, though it’s indefinable as to what.

He goes west, far, far west, settles down in a quiet town with mild winters and mild summers. Never cold enough for snow, but cold enough for frost. He works with cars and farm equipment because although the maniac zest that pervaded Todd’s life is gone and he has a rather intimidating demeanor from his time endangering himself in New York, Todd still has that insatiable curiosity and drive to break and explore and build.

Todd meets another friend and this one lasts a while and they pass a sizable amount of time together. The end of their thirties, forties, fifties. Neither of them are the marrying type, and their placid existence stretches out together and Tom could add in more detail in his reports to heaven but he doesn’t.

Todd meets strange people and tells them strange stories and they trade back strange stories in turn. He finds the adventure and thrills and tales of far off lands he had sought so desperately in his youth in the odd straggling tangle of people that make it through into his life.

Todd’s friend does not clear his sixties and with this too, Todd leaves something behind as he goes forward.

Todd is aging and slowing down and with age he becomes more reclusive. He doesn’t go out much more. He sits on an old porch out west, listening to opera music played on a phonograph that was on the fritz and skipped notes more often than not. His neighbor is a young mother who greets him every now and then when she goes out to hang her laundry up to dry.

He visits a book store regularly, mostly to get out, sometimes to actually parse through the dusty tomes and see if anything worth the time has turned up. On an odd afternoon of one such occasion he sees someone that reminds him of a face he can’t quite place in his memory, but one that he feels he knows. He stares at the man a considerable amount before the man notices. 

After a brief exchange the man leaves and Todd is left with a leak in his gut, or his chest, or his soul. He starts bleeding out time.

Todd gets sick. One of his neighbors finds him slumped on his chair next to the skipping phonograph with a skipping heartbeat and within the hour he is on his way to the hospital with a fluttering pulse, that shivered, stuttered, and stopped.

Todd dies.

“Well, that was a good run,” Comes Kim’s voice from behind him. 

“Hello again,” Tom says, turning to her. It feels like it is the first time he has spoken in ages, because it is. “Katya says hello.”

“Oh,” Kim smiles to herself softly. “Tell her I’ll be up sometime soon, like, within the millennia.”

Tom nods and Kim smiles at him appreciatively. Then Tom feels himself being pulled out of the mortal realm in a bloom of light and soft harmonic music. Angels and their theatrics. Then he is back in the ever familiar realm of the waffle house. 

After about seventy years of earth it strikes him as small, almost crushingly so.

What a day, life, he isn’t really sure what measurement of time to use anymore if he is being honest. It’s all sort of starting to feel irrelevant to him again, which is odd, because he has clear memories of it meaning the world to him back when he was human.

Across the table from Tom is Tord. On the table in front of him is his assignment slip with a stamp of approval on it. Tord is heaven-bound. Tom looks at it and then slides it across the table to Tord who looks at it and then back up at Tom with a grin.

“Been a while,” Tord says, and it is just Tord for once. Not Tord’s eyes on someone else’s face, or Tord’s laugh at a different pitch, or Tord’s mannerisms on a mismatched body.

It was just Tord.

“Hi,” Tom says, mouth dry, a little lost for words. He realizes, somewhere in all the pain and misery and desolation of his general experience, that having something this nice right before him makes him feel jittery. It’s like being given a little glass hummingbird, its beautiful and delicate and awe inspiring, but he doesn’t quite trust himself, or the universe for that matter, to make it all go wrong.

Tord reaches out a hand to him and slips his fingers into Tom’s and Tom’s stomach goes light and fluttery at the touch and it is all a bit too much. It is too good. 

“I can remember you,” Tord said. “It’s nice.”

“I signed up to be your angel” Tom says. “You were a pain.” They both laugh.

“I was,” Tord agrees. “But then, so were you.”

“I guess it’s just an inevitable part of existing,” Tom smiles.

“That it is.”

“Hey so, I have been here far too much of late,” Tom says. “And I am a bit sick of the coffee here.”

“Want to go somewhere else and catch up?” Tord says.

“You can’t even imagine,” Tom rises to his feet and offers his hand to Tord who takes it. They look over and catch Katya’s eyes.

“Kim says she’ll be coming up sometime soon,” Tom calls. Katya does a small cheer and then waves goodbye to them.

“Now don’t let me catch you two back here,” She said coming over to them. “It’s no place for angels like yourselves.”

Once again they find themselves on the edge of the patio, looking down into the whirling grey chasm beneath. Tord looks at Tom, Tom looks at Tord. Tom nods and they step off. This time as they hurtle downwards two sets of wings bloom out above them, catching the whirling gyres that churn all around them.

Tom’s wings are snow white with speckled flecks of black as if ash had rained down on them and permanently stuck. Tord’s are jet black with little flecks of white and look like a star system as they sweep violently down sending Tord sailing up in a rush. Tom turns his face heavenward and watches as Tord sails above him.

And then with a few beats of his wings he is chasing up after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHANGED MY STATE OF MIND  
> LOVES SO HARD TO FIND

**Author's Note:**

> That one's for you Lucas, lmao


End file.
